I have been flying pretty well all over the planet for over 3 decades. It is a safe bet that pilots everywhere occasionally fly inaccurate speeds, ETAs etc, particularly after a long night. Other, busier jurisdictions manage to cope with this and remain generally efficient. There have even been noticeable improvements around a lot of Asia over the last few years. Even India.
But Australian ATC, in a relatively benign weather and terrain environment, particularly MEL and SYD, just seems to be on that razor’s edge all the time, and can still be described as anal at best, and excruciating at worst.
Very occasionally, one can experience the more switched-on controller at MEL achieving reasonable and even slick operations on the crossing runways and can think, ‘This one would do OK at Heathrow or JFK’. So maybe it is not just the ‘system’.